Monday, September 17, 2012

Fine,
perfectly nuanced performances by the two leading ladies; Ileana D’Cruz in her
Bollywood debut leaves a lasting impression and Priyanka Chopra in a subtly
delivered, unconventional role

A
liberal mix of able performances by the supporting cast, notably Saurabh Shukla
as the hapless cop who unsuccessfully pursues Barfi as the two create several slapstick
Chaplinesque cinematic moments; Rupa Ganguly as Ileana’s mother, wary of
letting her daughter make an unwise choice at a crossroads she herself encountered
in the past; Haradhan Bandopadhyay as the ‘other man’ who values and loves Priyanka for who she is

Superlative
direction by Anurag Basu, who makes this one of the finest films to have
emerged from Bollywood in recent times, with brilliant camera work, evocative
use of expressions and emotions to convey meaning without the aid of dialogues
and drawing out of fine performances from his cast

Fabulous
cinematography by Ravi Varman; bringing alive Darjeeling and Kolkata in each
frame

Last
but not the least, a stellar performance by Ranbir Kapoor who brings alive
the character of Barfi in a knock-your-socks-off performance

Preparation

Take a beautifully woven bitter-sweet story of the
relationship between a deaf-mute guy Murphy aka Barfi (Ranbir Kapoor), who
although lacking the senses of speech and hearing, is vibrantly blessed with
the ability to live life with a free spirit and a, as he puts it more
eloquently than words can in the film, ‘first class’ heart, and two girls who
touch his life in different ways. One is the delicately pretty Shruti (Ileana
D’Souza) whom he falls in love with at first sight and woos relentlessly till
she eventually gives in to his charms, and the other is his autistic childhood
friend Jhilmil(Priyanka Chopra) whom he initially pursues when driven to the
edge by fate and circumstances.

Add a
liberal dose of the sweetly innocent romance between the poor but resourceful Barfi;
usually on the run from the long arm of the law for his petty misdemeanors, and
Shruti, which sadly caves in to Shruti’s inability to follow her heart, as she
gives in to the ‘safe’ option instead and opts for a more ‘eligible’ suitor.
Stir in gently the unfolding of the complex relationship between Jhilmil who
sees the world with a unique sensitivity and recognizes Barfi’s spirit and soul
in the way other, ‘normal’ people are unable to, and Barfi’s ability to
connect with Jhilmil and win her trust and affection.

Roast a non linear narrative in some suspense,
creating a plot that keeps you guessing till the very end and throw in an
unexpected twist that adds a mysterious, whodunit element as the paths of
Barfi, Jhilmil and Shruti dramatically converge.

Prepare a multi-string syrup of accompanying,
sometimes quirky; sometimes heart stirring music right from the ‘picture shuru’
ditty that gets you in the mood from the word go, to the title track ‘Ala Barfi’
and add to the mix. Garnish liberally with breathtaking cinematography that
lovingly brings alive the lush landscapes of Darjeeling and the vibrant chaos
of Kolkata.

Savour fresh and warm, this lovely Barfi that offers
a tribute to the uncomplicated nature of true, lasting love if only we would
let it take its own path instead of cluttering it with logic and reason. Toss
in the fact that the disabilities of the characters in the film are portrayed in
an almost matter of fact way, never once attempting to elicit pity or sympathy;
on the contrary Barfi’s uniqueness lies in his ability to deal with the trials
life throws up with a cheery doff of the hat and a ready smile.

You will especially enjoy some slices of
this dish such as when Barfi expresses his deep hurt at being rejected by Shruti
through a soundless, wordless, and power packed expression of his anguish. Or
the gradual building up of the relationship between Barfi and Jhilmil against the
changing backdrops of Barfi’s rickety Darjeeling home, a tumultuous journey laced
with green fields and rushing rivers to finally culminate in the noisy,
bustling Kolkata which embraces them in its midst. Not to mention the subtle
interplay of emotions when Shruti and Jhilmil meet each other, their perceptions
of the other’s role in Barfi’s life and Shruti’s eventual realization of what
could have been hers. Then there are other little nuggets like the test Barfi
puts all his friends through; to lay his insecurity of being abandoned at rest,
and the way he rushes to Jhilmil’s defense when a leery lout is giving her the
once over, which will leave you with a sweet taste.

Dig into this delectable Barfi while it is still
being served fresh; it will leave you with a happy rush like no other, and one that
will stay with you long after you’ve polished off this unforgettable treat!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Peach coloured skies with purple clouds. Crimson
grass. Orange elephants and magenta seals. Nikki goes through a sheaf of A4
size sheets of paper, filling them up with a plethora of vibrant colours. We are at an
art workshop for kids and I’m accompanying Nikki as she experiments with finger
paint (so squishy!) and painting on different mediums (can I start painting
your bed after we go home?). There’s another little boy seated next to us who
seems concerned about Nikki’s artwork.

“The sky is not
that colour” he whispers to his mother in obvious anguish. “The grass is not red.”

The mother hisses something back at him and he
subsides temporarily.

The workshop facilitator hands out fresh sheets of
paper; this time with line drawings on them, and jars filled with fat crayons
which Nikki grabs with glee. It’s a picture of a house with a fence and a garden.
Nikki deliberates between the finger paint and the crayons, makes up her paint
and smears paint liberally across the picture. Strokes of paint fill up the
house and the garden; an indigo roof, green walls, yellow grass. The little boy cannot contain himself anymore. He
abandons his own drawing and is at our side in a trice.

“No, not like that!" he chides Nikki “You have to
draw inside the lines! You will get a red mark. Sky is blue, grass is green!”

His mother pulls him away before I can reply and
rebukes him thoroughly for not concentrating on his work.

She turns to me with a tight smile “She cannot
colour inside the lines?” pointing at Nikki.

“I’ve never asked her to” I smile back.

I did give Nikki a colouring book once; she had been
gifted a Winnie the Pooh one for her birthday and given that Pooh threatened to
overtake our theme for home décor during those days I thought she might like
it. She didn’t. She never actually took to colouring within the lines,
preferring instead to fill up reams of blank paper with her artwork instead. And fill
them up she did, astonishing me sometimes with the creativity and imagination
only children possess.

She draws the rain and butterflies, families of fish
and music. One side of our fridge is filled with renditions of tea parties in
the clouds and the moon taking care of her baby. We don’t really miss colouring
within the lines much.

I know that Nikki is asked to colour within the lines
sometimes at the preschool she goes to, and from the activity sheets I am taken
through at PTMs I know she can do it perfectly well if she wants to. But I also
know that she does not enjoy it, preferring the freedom a blank sheet of paper
offers instead.

We are lucky to have found a preschool that encourages
creativity among its children. There are no red marks for drawing. Purple skies
are encouraged, as are pink elephants and geese with polka dots. But I know
there are a lot of parents who don’t like this approach, preferring instead the
more traditional one of teaching
kids that the grass can only be green and colour is best used within boundaries
and not splayed all over the paper. Just last week I overheard a mother complaining
about how sand play needs to be structured with kids being given specific
instructions on what to do with their spades and buckets rather than just being
left loose in the sand pit; and another parent of a boy in the nursery class
lamenting how his child is not being taught how to write yet. I listened to
them talk and felt a little worried. And then I read the morning papers, all
about artist Aseem Trivedi being arrested for displaying ‘too much creativity’
and felt positively scared. Aside from the misuse of a colonial era law or the growing
intolerance in the political and social environment, what is equally alarming
is the judgement that is so carelessly thrown on an individual’s creative
expression. Who decides what is too creative? Or too little? Are there measures
defined to judge how much is 'too creative' or lines and boxes that it can be fitted into? Are we looking at a
future where our preschoolers go for sandpit class, learning precise
co-ordination of spade with bucket and move on to postgraduate in fine arts
which clearly specifies what is too creative and what is not? The curbs on our creativity
grow deep roots. Our educational system has traditionally been one based on rote
and memorization rather than independent thought or creativity. There are firm boundaries
that are drawn when we are very young and we grow up learning to live within
them. And when some of us think or speak differently, it can create a lot of
discomfort.

Nikki in the meantime has moved on to caricatures
and is busy sketching portraits. A gargoyle-ish figure with pointy hair is me,
I am told. One vaguely resembling Suppandi is our cook. Her father is a
dignified looking turnip.

“We will put these up on the fridge” I tell her.

“Okay but not this one. This one is too nice and
this one is horrible. Put this, it is just right.”

Creativity really is that simple, and it doesn’t
take a three year to show us that. Let the artists define their own boundaries.

Monday, July 2, 2012

The art of conducting
an involved conversation with a toddler from behind a closed door. Work related
phone calls to the tune of background screeching and whining. Super quick bathroom
breaks, before your toddler who’s convinced that mommy has vanished into dark
oblivion, breaks the door down. Even quicker showers that leave you feeling
that emerging from a whirlwind might be more relaxing. Protecting your laptop as
you try and work, from pint sized elements who think tapping away at laptop
keys is an exciting form of recreation. Coffee breaks with the Teletubbies.

Sounds familiar? If it
doesn’t, welcome to the world of a ‘Work from Home Mom’.

When I first became a
mother, along with the joys of endless nappy changes and sleepless nights, I
was also introduced to the complex terminology used to classify different types
of mothers. There were SAHMs or stay-at- home moms and WOHMs or working-out-of-the-
home moms. And somewhere in between were the WFHMs, or the work-from- home moms,
whose category I soon joined.

Initially, I was smugly
satisfied about the whole work-from-home concept. After several years of killer
commutes, long hours peering at a computer screen in fluorescent light and
suffering the tasteless dishwater most office vending machines serve up in the
name of coffee, working from home felt a little like having your cake and
eating it too. With an extra cherry and frosted icing thrown in for good
measure. I would get to spend time with my daughter without giving up on work I
loved doing. Plus, with office being a hop and a skip away (quite literally),
there would be no commuting woes; I could work in my pajamas if I so wanted from
the comforts of my home and have easy
access to freshly brewed coffee.

Working from home would
be a breeze, I thought.

I was in for a rude
shock.

While working from home
has its unparalleled benefits especially when you’re a mother, it is certainly no
cakewalk.For one, there is the
small matter of getting afore mentioned pint sized elements to behave while you
try and get some work done. Given that the PSE’s are prone to unreasonable
tantrums and sudden urges to go potty, especially when you’re in the middle of
an important call, the whole work from home jig can become quite challenging.
Of course you can hire help to look after your kids, but that often throws up a
whole new set of challenges in uncharted territory. Finding good help, for one.
And then training said help to care for your kids while you work.

I remember emerging
from a seven second shower (the norm, when you’re any kind of mom, unless
you’re really lucky) once, eager to
get some work done, only to nearly step on my daughter and her nanny who were
both camping on the bathmat outside.

“We were waiting for
you to come out and tell us what to do” said the nanny matter-of-factly when I
demanded to know why my daughter was getting intimate with the bathmat instead
of doing something constructive with her time.“After all you are at home only, no?”

Being ‘at home only,
no’ can be far more difficult than getting away to an office where you can
neatly compartmentalize your home and work life. Not so much at home, where
even if you are lucky to have a somewhat secluded space to do your work in,
people always manage to find you. I made the mistake of having a dining table
office in the first couple of weeks when I started working from home. Apart
from having to share work space with the breakfast dishes, this also put me in
the precarious position of being within easy reach of my open plan kitchen from
where my rather chatty cook would feel free to strike up a conversation about the
latest skirmish in the neighbor’s house or her son’s school report, whenever
the fancy struck her.

Besides, when you are
at home, you have increased visibility of the things that you could have
happily ignored had you been away at an office. Like the dust bunnies lurking
in the corners or the pile of growing laundry. Even if, like me, you are adept
at ignoring these little housekeeping niggles, it can be tough to ignore the attitude
of assorted people who will drop in announced just because ‘you are at home’ or
call you whenever the fancy strikes them to give you elaborate updates on their
dog’s gastric condition, completely ignoring the fact that you may be trying to
get some work done.

Or people who give you
the ‘yeah, right’ look when you tell
them you work from home. As in “yeah, right,
and I’m Santa’s little helper.”

“Its okay didi, I know” my cook whispered to me
conspiratorially last week, when I reminded her for the umpteenth time to get
on with her work and let me get on with mine, instead of giving me the latest
scoop on building gossip.

“You know what?” I
asked, slightly confused.

“I know what you really do. The lady on the 9th
floor in whose house I work said that there is no such thing as ‘work from
home’. She said you must be just doing some time pass on the internet.”

Yes, so being a work-from-home
mom is not for the faint-hearted. And I’m not even getting started on the bad
days when schools are shut, or the children fall ill or the help mysteriously
disappear to their gaons for vague,
unexplained reasons. So the next time,
someone you know tells you she’s a work-from-home mom, give her an encouraging
pat on the back. Even better, take her out for coffee or offer to watch her
kids while she takes a luxurious ten minute shower. Trust me, she deserves it.

Monday, June 18, 2012

A few years ago I was
on a road trip with friends when the bus we were travelling in stopped at a
rickety roadside joint for what was ostensibly a comfort break. As we clambered
off the bus, the lady seated in front of us turned to her daughter and asked in
a voice loud enough for the entire parking lot to hear “Susu karna hai beta?”

Now this would have
been fine if the daughter in question had been a little girl or a toddler fresh
out of diapers. Except that she was a grown woman, probably in her mid twenties.
As she turned a scintillating shade of red, the rest of us could almost feel
her mortification!

A cousin recently narrated
a similar experience when she visited family friends with her parents. Now a
manager in a leading MNC, heading a team of 20 odd people, to her parents she’s
still their little girl. During their visit, her mother first asked her on
reaching their host’s house if she needed to use the bathroom. Then her father
asked her to join the host’s young children, rather than conversing with the
adults.

“It was humiliating!”
my cousin recounted “There I was, telling people about the work I do and
suddenly my parents make me feel like a 5 year old again!”

Many of us have
probably been in similar situations, when our parents refuse to treat us like
adults even when we have graying hair and children in high school. Parents
don’t mean it, of course. It can be difficult to accept that the dependent little
bundle you doted on is a grown, confident adult with a mind and life of his or
her own, and needs to be treated as such. It’s not so much fun for the now
grown up kids though, when their parents insist on treating them like the
children they once were.

Considering that the thought
of my daughter going unsupervised for parties and sleepovers in future is
capable of giving me panic attacks now, I see a clear and present danger that I
will eventually metamorphose into one of those parents who refuse to let their
kids grow up. So I thought I’d set out some guidelines for myself, for when my
daughter grows older:

1.In deference to the unfortunate recipients
of the comfort break query mentioned above, I promise never to ask you if you need
to ‘do susu’, once you’ve crossed the age of 4 and are in full control of your
bowel movements. I might whisper it occasionally till you’re 10 though. But
never in full public hearing, and definitely not when we have company. I may
know for a fact that you haven’t taken a pee break in hours, but no matter how
strong the urge (pun unintended); I resolve to not pop the question.

2.I will not call you every evening and
ask you what you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner accompanied by a detailed
lecture on the nutritive value, or lack thereof, of the same. Not unless you
are grossly obese and these are the doctor’s express orders or you’re training
for the Olympics and need help with diet planning. After all, if I still need
to obsess over every morsel that goes into your mouth thirty years from now,
one of us will definitely need therapy.

3.I promise not to bring up embarrassing
incidents from your childhood with others, especially in large public
gatherings. I’ve been the recipient of one too many ‘remember the time she had
a sip of whisky when she was five and went berserk, bwahahaha!’ to do that. No
embarrassing videos or photos on open display either. (I hope you’re reading
this, Dad. Yes, you can put away those
cheesy videos of me at 11 years reeling off travelogue in a sing song voice.)

4.I will not tell you what to do. Once of
course, you reach an age where you realize that switching off my laptop when
I’m working on it is nobody’s idea of fun and mud baths are okay for the spa
and not the park. I mean this within reasonable limits so don’t think I’ll
stand by without saying a word if you decide to flush your life down the drain.
And I may make an exception if it’s one of those rare situations where you are
desperate for direction, or when you can clearly benefit from my experience or….Sigh.
Right. I will not tell you what to do.

5.I will refrain from criticizing your
appearance and telling you what to wear. If ripped jeans and faded tees are
your idea of high fashion, so be it. I’m sure your grandmother will say this is
poetic justice, given that I had taken to donning the grunge look for weddings
in my teens. Given your current affinity for wearing matching-matching clothes,
replete with accessories and moisturizing your hands with pink cream every few
minutes, I may just end up taking some pointers from you in this area.

6.I will not try and influence or
criticize your choice of friends. With your father turning a delicate shade of
green even now, every time you get too friendly with a member of the opposite
sex, I’m sure I can leave the worrying to him for once. On a serious note, as
an independent young adult nothing can be more important to you than having the
freedom to choose the individuals whose company you’d like to keep. The last
thing you’d want is an interfering parent telling you she doesn’t approve of
so-and-so. This means I may have to give up my plans of stalking you on dates
when you’re older though. Ah well.

7.When you have kids of your own, I will
restrain myself from giving you unending advice about ‘how we did things in our
time’. There can be nothing more irritating than being treated like a 3 year
old in front of your own 3 year old, so you’ll get none of that from me.

8.I will treat you like the grown up that
you are and not lapse into sepia tinged nostalgia from when you were a mere
suckling. I will also try and avoid getting overtly sentimental about your
babyhood even though I can give no guarantees on this given that I was nearly
in tears when you came on stage during your annual concert, causing the lady
next to me to move away a few seats. Oh, and I will also not haunt you on
social networking websites.

9.I will trust you to take adequate care
of your dental health and will stop eating your chocolates because they are
terrible for your teeth and will make you emotionally dependent on cocoa. Yes,
I ate the chocolate you were gifted at school today but it’s only because I
care about your teeth. And, I may be slightly emotionally dependent on cocoa
myself. But none of that once you are older; your chocolates will be safe with
me. Although I’m sure you won’t mind sharing, will you? Maybe just the occasional
nibble, then.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

The alarm that didn't go off when it was supposed to. That delicious extra half an hour of sleep that seems even sweeter because it is unexpected. The slow realization coming with reluctant wakefulness that it is a school day and we are now running late! The nightmarish frenzy to get things together in time. The dropping of all the usual efforts for a relaxed morning routine as we run around like headless chickens (the husband and I naturally, not Nikki who seems quite removed from such mundane things as school runs) shoveling breakfast down our throats, gulping tea while furiously multitasking and setting new records for the seven second shower.

In the middle of all the madness sometimes I forget the little things.

"Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up!" I screech at my child as she meditates over the exact way to butter her toast.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry!" I squawk as she goes about the business of washing her hands with a quiet industriousness.

"We're getting late!" I work myself up into a lather as she gently blows bubbles with her own.

Forgetting that I am screeching at her for my own tardiness. Forgetting that one of the most unpleasant things about going to school can be crazy, screechy early mornings with manic parents rushing to bundle you off to school and telling you to 'hurry up' and 'rush, rush rush' and 'not be slow' and 'we're getting late because of you!' Forgetting that I was only just setting myself up for a major guilt trip later on in the day, when I could have been relaxing over a cuppa instead.

And so I did. I grinned. Sang a silly song. Sat down beside her and made up a story about putting on your shoes on your own. Drove to school with the windows down and the breeze in our hair and 'mein to tuk tuk tortoise hoon' playing in the background.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

My sister and I were
often partners in crime during our growing up years and back then I often
thought that if I ever had kids of my own I would want two girls, just like my
sister and me. It was a girlish notion, long before motherhood brought with it
the realization that bringing a child into this world is nothing short of a
miracle and it truly doesn’t matter whether it is a girl or a boy, but I
happened to mention this childhood fancy to a colleague during a chance
conversation many years later when the topic veered around to that of raising
children.

I politely assured her
that I had indeed meant two girls and she gave me a wondering look, the kind
one normally reserves for a particularly slow-on-the-uptake, half-wit and shook
her head.

A few weeks ago I was
attending a function when I was subjected to the same look, this time by
someone I know. At most functions I attend these days people consider it
perfectly normal to come up to me and ask when I am planning to “have the
second one” in a rather proprietorial fashion. By this naturally they mean to
ask when I plan to have a second child since my first born, my daughter, is now
considered old enough to have a sibling and something must be seriously wrong
with me if I am not contemplating having a second child. Not so long ago this
question used to irk me enough to either retort in a rather rude fashion or
display my sometimes unfortunate sense of humour depending on my mood. These
days though it doesn’t bother me as much as it once did (I like to think it’s
the maturity that comes with motherhood) and I waver between mumbling something
vague into my glass, if I have one handy, or just smiling in a benign fashion,
which usually gets rid of the person asking the question.

I was not so lucky at
this particular function though, because the question was followed with the
fervent wish that hopefully I would have a boy the second time so that my
family would be ‘complete’.

“What’s the problem if
it’s a girl instead” I asked politely, secretly marveling at the maturity that
comes with motherhood which had ensured that my glass was still in my hand
rather than having its contents dumped on the head of the pestilential
question- asker.

That was when I
received The Look again.

“What a silly question”
the pestilential QA, let’s call her X, sneered “Everyone wants a boy.” The motley group of women that happened to
be hanging around as this conversation happened looked on in silence, some
nodded knowingly, almost as a sign of tacit approval. What I found most
disappointing was the fact that X was of my own generation and profile; an
educated, financially independent woman with children of her own and enough
opportunity and resources to broaden her thinking. And yet she believed that a
woman cannot be truly happy unless she has given birth to a boy. The sad part
is that she is not alone. There are many women out there who believe that a
family is incomplete unless there is a male ‘heir’ in it and will go to great
lengths to ensure that they get one, from consulting the Chinese calendar which
offers pre-conception advice guaranteed to produce a male child to the infamous
sex selection clinics in Thailand.

I come from a family of
fierce feminists, where nobody bats an eyelid when a girl rides a horse while
her brother bakes a cake, and to that extent I was fairly sheltered from the
followers of the Chinese calendar when I was growing up, so it came as a bit of
a culture shock when I first encountered them. And encounter them I did, in
hordes. Women, who think only a boy can carry the name of the family forward,
financially support his ageing parents, and for whom they will not have to shell
out a substantial dowry when time comes to get him married, only to send him
away to live with strangers. Women who dolefully shake their heads when
informed that I have only one sister and no brother and who assure me that they
will pray that there is a boy in the family soon.

These women I speak of
are not from the economically weaker sections of society. They are women from
financially affluent homes, educated and superficially broad minded. Women from
my generation; born in the late seventies, or early eighties. You politely
point out to them that girls from our generation are increasingly keeping their
maiden names post marriage, thereby debunking the ‘ghar ka chirag’ myth, are
financially independent and perfectly capable of looking after their families,
often chose their partners themselves, who like them do not subscribe to the
concept of dowry and are supportive of their partners’ decision to continue
being financially independent and supporting their families if need be.

Yes all that is true, is
the response you get, accompanied by more doleful head shaking, but a girl’s
life is so tough. Girls are always
unsafe, subject to the prying eyes of men, girls have to leave their homes and
go to another family, girls have to go through the physical trauma of giving
birth and then they have to give up these careers you speak of to raise their
children. Girls are cursed from the day they are born so naturally, everyone
wants a boy.

At this point if you
have the tenacity to continue the conversation, you could ask these women, that
given that we have arrived at the morbid conclusion that girls indeed are
cursed, what could we possibly do about it? Can we ensure that our daughters
are equipped to protect themselves by educating them about safety, self preservation
and perhaps teaching them some form of self defense? Should we not talk to them
(and their brothers) about sex education from an early age, keep clear and open
lines of communication with them as they grow up so that they are equipped to
make the right choices in future? Can we give them the best possible resources
so that they in turn can realize their full potential?

At this point I usually
realize that I am engaged in a rather futile rant because these women are just
doing the doleful head shake all over again and muttering that all this is too
much trouble. Why not just consult the Chinese calendar instead? And if all
else fails there is always that trip to Thailand.

Further probing often
reveals that they find it too embarrassing to discuss the ‘S-Word’ with their
kids, leaving that instead to the vast knowledge they will surely gain from
their peer group, and are inordinately proud of having had normal, epidural
free childbirths, because you are not really a woman until you have lived
through that kind of pain. And of course if you have to endure that kind of
pain you may as well have given birth to a boy, because at the end of the day everyone….you know the drill.

This is the point where
I end the conversation abruptly because it is usually the precursor to the gory
birth story, and also because I have a raging headache by then.

I did the same with X
after she mournfully informed me that she and her husband had both been very
disappointed when my daughter was born and they would continue hoping that I
would someday be blessed with a son. She then went on to add that whenever
someone in their social circle is expecting a child, they always hope that it
is a boy because there should always be one boy in the family, and after that
having a girl is not so bad, because they are like add-ons (!).

I found myself
wondering what would have happened if X had herself had no sons. Would she have
continued consulting the Chinese calendar or pinning her hopes on the Thai
clinic with the latest technology in the senseless quest for a boy? Would she
have brought up her daughters resenting them, always longing for a boy? Would
she have kept reminding them how they had been a disappointment to their
parents by coming into the world? I can’t help feeling a little glad that X
doesn’t have any daughters.

Monday, March 5, 2012

I discovered the wonderful book review program run by the people over at Blog Adda some time back and when I'd finally gotten over the fact that there were people out there willing to send you books you might be interested in to review, I promptly signed up and began applying for books with a zeal worthy of the gold diggers of ancient Australia. Much hopeful application and wistful trawling through e-mail later, I finally got a congratulatory e-mail a few days ago and soon after a copy of 'Urban Shots' was delivered to our doorstep. In terms of timing, this couldn't have happened at a more opportune moment for two reasons: 1)This blog is in urgent need of resuscitation and the requirement to do a book review will hopefully act as a much needed kick on the posterior in that direction, 2) Intensive practice for the child's annual concert (thought playschool was a hoot did you? *insert sound of hysterical laughter here*) was happening around the time I got the book and it made for a light, breezy read between rounds of concert drop offs and pick ups and watching Nikki do her banana-in-pajamas act on stage (more on that later).

And so, it was with a sense of general contentment and bonhomie(well at least as much as you can squeeze in while a bunch of preschoolers run amok in the vicinity) that I settled in with my copy of Urban Shots. The Urban Shots that I read was the first publication in the series (they have since come up with a few more titles) and is an anthology of short stories contributed by writers with varied backgrounds from all over the country. The book makes for an interesting bouquet of tales reflecting relationships, love and longing in their myriad forms against a backdrop of urban India. The collection starts off with 'Hope comes in small packages', a touching account of a young woman's struggle to come to terms with devastating bereavement and how she finds hope in the unlikeliest of places. Getting off to a promising start, the stories then span the lives and relationships of a multitude of characters, from the intuitively perceptive Chamundi in Malathi Jaikumar's 'Liberation' who learns to free herself from the man she is bonded to for life in her own unique way, to the liberated Kajal in Ahmed Faiyaz's 'It's a small world' who finds herself facing the prospect of a gilded prison of an altogether different kind. I quite enjoyed the frothy, perky 'Apple Pies and a Grey Sweater' by Prateek Gupta and Kunal Dhabalia's 'Love-All'. The sepia tinged 'Dialects of Silence' by Vrinda Baliga left a lasting impact with its strikingly simple and yet stirring narrative and is a story that I know is going to stay with me.

Many of the stories are easily relatable, these are situations we have been in, people we know, sometimes even people we could have been ourselves. The book has been edited by Paritosh Uttam, author of 'Dreams in Prussian Blue', launched under the Penguin 'Metro Reads' series and he has contributed several stories to the anthology as well, stories which take familiar, well worn situations and subtly introduce an element of disruption that jolts you out of your comfort zone to reach a startling revelation. Young, restless, often unreasonable love is brought out beautifully in 'A mood for love' when the protagonist Ruchi hankers for an elusive soul mate as she thinks 'I could love you. I could love anybody now...'

Many of the stories are layered and offer themselves up for a slower re-exploration. Some however do disappoint, they are either too flat or too uni-dimensional to really strike a chord but these are few and far between. Overall, Urban Shots makes for an interesting read, and offers a unique perspective into the young and the restless, the bold and the beautiful as conjured up by some of young, urban India's finest minds.